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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28395087">lean streets, desperate sunsets</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/arahir/pseuds/arahir'>arahir</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Great Pretender (Anime)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Protectiveness, Sharing a Bed, comfort/comfort, single dad and ex criminal takes in world's saddest conman: a fic, the hurt already happened so i guess it's just comfort</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-12-29</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-01-31</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-10 15:28:06</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Explicit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>18,824</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28395087</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/arahir/pseuds/arahir</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Edamura's final act is, in many ways, his simplest. He disappears. AU where Edamura's speech at the end was earnest.</p><blockquote>
  <p>Salazar reaches over to push the shirt up another few inches before he can decide it’s none of his business.</p>
  <p>“Jesus Christ,” he breathes. </p>
  <p>Rust, all the way up: a tear of it across the kid’s chest, under off-white gauze that should have been changed when Edamura showed up on his doorstep last night if not the day before that. He does quick math in his head: a flight from fuck knows where, a day on either side to go from whatever did this to sitting on a plane to Los Angeles. </p>
  <p>A hand wraps around his wrist loosely. When he looks up, Edamura is staring at him, nothing in his eyes but that same tired apology. </p>
  <p>“Are you in danger?” Salazar asks. </p>
  <p>Edamura smiles wryly. “No. I wouldn’t have brought that to you two.”<br/></p>
</blockquote>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Edamura Makoto/Salazar</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>139</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>349</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Chapter 1</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>I KNOW NO ONE ELSE SHIPS THIS i don't care i just want edamura to be happy and i'm a simp for whatever this relationship is... me falling for the pairing i made up in my head... more likely than you think</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>On a Friday night in mid-January, Edamura washes up on his doorstep. Salazar opens the door and doesn’t recognize him for the full breath it takes Edamura to open his mouth and give a faint, “Hey.”</p><p>It’s the voice he remembers—everything else has changed. Edamura is older, for one, glasses gone, hair slicked back. His watch, his shoes, the pants that fit him like an expensive glove are all new, but that voice is the same, or nearly. Edamura’s accent is fainter than it used to be, but once you’ve heard someone’s voice beg and break—well. It sticks with a man. </p><p>It’s been five years, and Edamura looks like he’s lived them like most men live a decade.</p><p><em>I thought you were dead </em>doesn’t seem like a solid opener<em>. </em>Neither does: <em>Did the plane drag you here?</em></p><p>“You on a job?” Salazar asks, because his son is in the house behind him and he’s not winning any awards for world’s greatest dad, but he can at least keep his son out of the worst of it.</p><p>“No,” Edamura says lightly, and sticks his hands in the pockets of his overcoat. “I don’t—I don’t do that anymore.” He looks down, takes a breath; a lock of his hair falls forward over his eyes. “How is Tom?”</p><p>“He’s fine. Why don’t you come inside?” Salazar motions to the still-open door because there are places for a conversation but a front step in east Los Angeles isn’t one of them. Anyway, it’s not every night he gets a visit from a ghost, and less often it’s one he wants to see.</p><p>Edamura doesn’t move. “Do you guys need anything?”</p><p>Anything. Like the easy million Salazar found in his bank account after the almost-botched job five years ago wasn’t enough, <em>courtesy of your friend, </em>the red-haired woman told him, and what did it say about his life that there was only one person she could be referring to. He would have owed the kid anyway—would have owed him for being the only person close enough and brave enough to tell him to get his shit together. </p><p>Salazar leans against the door frame. He doesn’t need anything, but it looks like maybe Edamura could use a week of sleep, for starters. "Kid, I'm the one who owes you."</p><p>Edamura laughs, but it’s awkward and forced. “No, no you don’t.” He toes at a crack in the concrete steps up to the door. “Helping you was the last good thing I did,” he tells his shoes. They’re Italian leather, shined to a black mirror polish, and it’s been a while since he was in that world but at a glance, they’re worth at least as much as the car in his garage. </p><p>And Edamura is wrong. This is a fact Salazar has known about him almost since the day they met and he had to keep himself from laughing the kid and the blond asshole both out of Cassano’s mansion when they told him he was supposed to believe Edamura was selling drugs. If he didn’t know it then, he knew it when he watched Edamura talk to Tom. Knew it by the wrinkle that made a permanent home between Edamura’s brows whenever Cassano was in the room. It was familiar. Salazar's own reflection twenty years past, before he learned a conscience didn’t pay the bills. </p><p>Edamura doesn't make bad things happen—bad things happen to him. Often, and well, it seems. </p><p>The night behind him is buzzing with crickets, the lazy glow of the streetlights making the whole neighborhood, the whole city, look warm, but Edamura is washed out. Not just pale—sick. He looks sick. Everything about this is wrong.</p><p>“Come inside,” Salazar repeats. Not an offer this time.</p><p>Edamura takes too long to reply, and Salazar knows he’s going to say no, give a wave and an excuse, and that’ll be the last time Salazar sees him. Maybe the last time anyone does. Sure enough, Edamura smiles, the apology lurking at the edges turning it sour. </p><p>Salazar steps off the porch and into Edamura’s space. "Come on.” He steps around and grabs the kid by the back of his expensive jacket, though there isn’t much to grab, and pushes him into the waiting door before he can protest. Not that he tries. The bones of his shoulders stick out even through the layers of cloth; a stiff wind could bowl him over and god knows there are enough of those this time of the year.</p><p>“I really don’t—” Edamura starts, but as soon as the door is closed behind them, Tom pokes his head in from the living room. </p><p>Edamura stiffens under his hand; Salazar gives him another push inside. </p><p>"Look who it is."</p><p>Tom's eyes light up. It’s been years—and more than a few—but Edamura is hard to forget. Anyway, Edamura isn’t the one who’s changed. Tom is almost as tall at fourteen as Edamura will ever be—and apparently hasn’t realized it yet. </p><p>Salazar gets to watch his son almost knock Edamura over with a hug; it’s only Salazar’s hand that keeps him from falling back. Now that he’s lit by more than half a shitty porchlight, Edamura doesn’t look bad. He looks worse. He looks like something that got dropped in the Pacific and left to float for a few days.</p><p>“Fuck,” Salazar murmurs. It isn’t audible over Tom’s barrage of questions, at least. “You hungry?”  he asks, louder, and steers Edamura toward the kitchen with Tom in tow. </p><p>“Do you remember me?” Tom is asking. “I bet you don’t.”</p><p>“Of course I do,” Edamura tells him with the first real smile he’s had since he arrived. </p><p>“Where do you work? I know you’re not a ninja now. That was lame. Dad said you knew him from work.”</p><p>Edamura sits in the chair Salazar pulls out for him and considers his hands. “I’m… an airplane mechanic.” </p><p>Salazar snorts. Yeah, an airplane mechanic in a three-thousand-dollar suit. A doctor, too, and anything else they could convince him to try on. A mechanic though, really?</p><p>Tom, with all the wisdom of his fourteen years, buys it and shoots off into a separate series of questions while Salazar tries to decide if offering an adult man a glass of milk is acceptable. It looks like Edamura has made a fine art out of missing meals and god knows what else. A thread of foreboding runs through him, because five years is a long time, more than long enough to change a man into a stranger. </p><p>He still looks at Tom in the same way, though. That grin, that patient voice. </p><p>Salazar settles on water and sets the glass down in front of Edamura without asking, and watches until he picks it up and takes a small sip, and then another. </p><p>"Have you ever flown a plane? Wait, what's the biggest plane you've ever seen? What's the smallest? Do they actually explode when they—"</p><p>“Tom.” Salazar nods to the arched doorway. "It's bedtime." It's not past eight, but Tom looks between them and maybe sees the same dark haunting Edamura's face that made Salazar pull him inside, and so he nods. </p><p>Edamura watches him go, and then gives Salazar a guilty look. "I’m sorry. I don’t know what I’m doing here—I just," his voice tightens, "wanted proof. That's stupid, right?"</p><p>Proof of what? He's going to apologize again; Salazar preempts it by getting up and fetching the industrial sized box of off-brand oreos he keeps around to bribe Tom into compliance, though that’s mostly an excuse since he hit his teens and decided food bribes were lame. Edamura is a few stops past a cookie being enough to cheer him up, but when that's all you’ve got, it’s a good place to start.</p><p>It works, in that Edamura doesn't apologize, too busy staring at the plate Salazar sets in front of him. "Thanks?"</p><p>"I'll get out blankets. We don't have a guest room, but..." and he has to weigh the hilarity of offering up his bed against the risk that if he puts Edamura on the couch, he'll wake up to him gone and never be sure if this was all a bizarre dream or not. </p><p>"No, I—I’m not staying.”</p><p>The argument dies on Edamura’s lips when Salazar folds his arms. Salazar still keeps his best bodyguard take-no-shit face in his back pocket for the rare times he needs to pull it out these days. It slides over his face; Edamura balks, picks up an oreo, murmurs, "Thanks," again and nibbles at the edge of the cookie.</p><p>He makes up a passable bed on the leather couch and by the time he gets back, the plate is half-empty and Edamura is face down on the table. He doesn't twitch when Salazar takes his pulse—a bit too hard, a bit too fast—or when Salazar pulls him into an awkward hold and muscles him into the living room and onto the couch. He stores the kid's shoes and coat by the door but stops short of taking off his belt for him.</p><p>A check of his jacket pockets comes up empty but for a passport, a lighter, and a wad of American dollars so crisp and new they almost look counterfeit.</p><p>The last thing he thinks before he turns the lights off and heads to bed is: If it’s another con, it sure isn’t his best.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>In the morning Salazar wakes up to the sound of the television drifting in from the living room, and two voices—one familiar, crowing out lines, and one lower, amused.</p><p>It takes thirty heart-pounding seconds for him to remember whose voice it is and why it's there and it doesn't really fully sink in until after he's grabbed the baseball bat he keeps next to his bed and run into the living room in his briefs and t-shirt and nothing else. Edamura and Tom are on the couch, sharing a blanket and what looks like a bowl of dry cereal, laughing at a cartoon.</p><p>Well, not laughing now. "Dad," Tom says with apparent embarrassment. </p><p>Edamura looks nothing but amused. That shadow around his eyes is a little lighter. "Morning," he says lightly, after he swallows his mouthful of dry frosted flakes. </p><p>They've gotta feed this kid something other than pure sugar. "I'll make breakfast," Salazar tells them both, hoping it sounds like a threat, and then decides that putting on pants first is probably a priority.</p><p>It’s a Saturday. Breakfast turns into lunch somewhere around noon, and by then it’s warm enough that even the excuse of a fresh breeze isn’t enough to keep them in the house. There’s a beach a half hour up the coast they go to every now and then, and while it’s been more <em>then </em>than now lately, it’s better than spending the day on the couch. </p><p>His dad playbook is thin. Food, exercise, a stern look now and then. Maybe a trip to the amusement park if the situation is particularly dire. Edamura isn’t his kid—isn’t much of a kid at all, really, for all that he looks like one of the beat-to-shit teens that used to drag themselves into Salazar’s orbit, little timebombs of resentment and sorrow that he could only pray would go off somewhere that wouldn’t affect the business.</p><p>Except, no. Not quite. That’s not Edamura. He’s gone off already. This is all aftermath, shrapnel and smoke, buzzing din and chaos. Somewhere, he left a mark. Salazar almost regrets he wasn’t there to see it.</p><p>He sleeps the whole way to the beach; Salazar looks in the rearview mirror to see him passed out against the window at one point and shares a look with Tom who reaches forward and turns down the radio without a word. He’s awake again when they get there, and down all over again the moment they’ve got a towel laid out on the warm sand. When he sleeps, he sprawls, which is something he knew from the security camera footage already, but it's almost laughable that he can take up three fourths of the towel despite being a third Salazar’s size. </p><p>That’s how he sees it. The kid is still wearing the remnants of his suit, but the shirt comes untucked and rides up over his stomach—muscled but wire thin—and there’s the telltale edge of white gauze peeking from just under his ribs.</p><p>Salazar reaches over to push the shirt up another few inches before he can decide it’s none of his business.</p><p>“Jesus Christ,” he breathes. </p><p>Rust, all the way up: a tear of it across the kid’s chest, under off-white gauze that should have been changed when Edamura showed up on his doorstep last night if not the day before that. He does quick math in his head: a flight from fuck knows where, a day on either side to go from whatever did this to sitting on a plane to Los Angeles. </p><p>A hand wraps around his wrist loosely. When he looks up, Edamura is staring at him, nothing in his eyes but that same tired apology. </p><p>“Are you in danger?” Salazar asks. </p><p>Edamura smiles wryly. “No. I wouldn’t have brought that to you two.”</p><p>He knows. He knows this, but wonders what it means that the kid would rather drag himself to a man he hasn’t seen in five years to nurse this wound than lie low somewhere, and something in his chest tightens. Salazar pulls the shirt back down, sits back and shields his eyes from the sun to watch where Tom is picking shells and oohing over the little crabs that hide in the rocks. He’s still young enough to be thrilled by sea creatures and bugs and every day Salazar is grateful he gets to be a part of it. </p><p>Every day, he remembers who he owes for that.</p><p>
  <em>That’s nothing but an excuse. The one who needs to figure out what’s really important is you. </em>
</p><p>A lesson from the world’s shittiest conman. Now it occurs to him to wonder where Edamura learned it, and well. “Sorry, kid,” he murmurs.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>There are questions he should ask, but he was particularly good at the silence part of his job once upon a time. They stay until sunset paints the coast gold and then Salazar drives them back with the sun in his eyes, Edamura and Tom sharing the backseat, Edamura passed out against the window again, and Tom passed out against his shoulder. Salazar almost misses their exit watching them.</p><p>When they get back, he follows Edamura into the bathroom while he’s still groggy and won’t put up a fight about it, pulls the first aid kid from under the sink, and starts unbuttoning the kid’s shirt. The kid goes shock-red but doesn’t fight. He winces at the pull as Salazar eases the shirt off his shoulders and covers his mouth when Salazar tears the old gauze off. </p><p>He’s no stranger to this brand of ugliness, but it’s a lot. On Edamura, it’s a lot: a strike of red up his chest, with the clean edges that only come from a knife. Salazar never wants to meet the kind of knife that can leave a slash almost a foot long. </p><p>“This’ll scar,” Salazar informs him. Stitches might have saved it, but it doesn’t seem right to nag when it looks like the fact there’s a half-assed bandage on it at all is a minor miracle. “Did you wrap it yourself?” he asks as he starts cleaning it, because the silence and the smell of antiseptic is a little too much in the small bathroom.</p><p>Edamura gives a jerky nod. </p><p>“We were your first job,” Salazar starts, and regrets it as soon as it's out, by the way the body under his hands goes stiff on the word <em>job, </em>but it’s too late to back out. “Not your last, I take it.”</p><p>For the first time Edamura has nothing to say. He did before, at every turn, at every development, something to bite out between his teeth, a lie to stutter in terror, a curse of pure rage spat out with blood on his teeth—but the kid was never quiet. That’s new, and it’s the kind of lesson that only gets learned the hard way.</p><p>This is what he thinks happened: the same thing that always does. Someone got greedy, or someone got careless. Someone reached too far, and someone got hurt. Edamura was the fallout, or the collateral damage. The cause or the effect. </p><p>Salazar sighs to himself. "The bigger the mark the harder they fall." </p><p>Edamura grabs his hand and says quiet and fast, “It wasn’t the mark.” Their eyes meet. His are a dark, heavy brown, and the ring around the outside is still black enough that Salazar isn’t sure it isn’t a bruise. “It wasn’t,” Edamura insists. </p><p>“I shouldn’t have said anything.” </p><p>“It’s fine.” </p><p>It’s not. </p><p>Salazar gives him one of his own t-shirts and a pair of boxers, though the shirt is so big it exposes most of one of his shoulders, and the boxers look more like board shorts. Tom is in the kitchen when they get out, heating up the god awful pizza bites he could probably down a hundred of in a sitting if that many could fit in the microwave at once, and as far as ruses go, it's a pretty good one. Salazar would almost believe it if he hadn’t seen the shadow of someone standing outside the bathroom for most of the back half of their conversation. Salazar gives him a look he hopes is knowing, but probably only gets across a general disdain for his son’s eating choices. Tom gives half a shrug, shoves a pizza roll in his mouth, and hands another to Edamura.</p><p>Salazar focuses on getting actual food together for the three of them and before long they're all on the couch, Edamura sandwiched in the middle and his lap playing table for guacamole, chips, a few perfunctory slices of dried fruit, and the rest of the damn pizza rolls. </p><p>"These are actually pretty good," Edamura says to the one he's picking cheese off.</p><p>"See?" Tom says, like Edamura's word is law.</p><p>Salazar rolls his eyes. "Then he can eat the rest."</p><p>"What? That's not fair—"</p><p>"No, no, you've gotta listen to you dad. You're still growing. This kind of stuff is terrible for you." Edamura pulls a wrinkled curl of dried fruit from the plate Salazar put together and puts it on Tom's lap with a beatific smile. "Eat up."</p><p>"Oh," Tom groans, "no, come on, that's not—" </p><p>He makes a mad grab for the pizza rolls; Edamura grabs two off the plate and shoves both in his mouth at once—"Impressive," Salazar mutters—and it initiates a mad scramble for the last one left. Salazar rescues the chips and guacamole to his own lap and pretends there isn't a slap fight between his son and a down-on-his-luck conman going on two inches to his left. </p><p>It becomes harder to ignore when Edamura scrambles against him, holding his arm up as far as possible as he tries to keep the last roll out of reach while Tom slaps at him—and, really? Salazar plucks it from his hand and eats it the way god apparently intended: all at once. </p><p>Edamura sags against him in defeat, and then his weight doubles as Tom sags against him, and Salazar realizes he's grinning. </p><p>The unfortunate result is that Edamura’s borrowed t-shirt is riding up again and now Tom has an eyeful of crisp gauze. </p><p>"How'd you get hurt?" he asks with bald curiosity.</p><p>Edamura, to his credit, doesn't flinch. "Doing ninja stuff."</p><p>Tom shoves at him and then bounces back in terror when Edamura gives a strangled and fake scream of agony. "Man down, man down!" Edamura laughs.</p><p>"Ugh, you… No, for real man, what happened?”</p><p>He hasn't learned tact yet, apparently. Salazar reaches around Edamura and delicately cuffs his son. "Leave him alone."</p><p>"But…"</p><p>Silence reigns a moment, and then Edamura puts a hand on Salazar's arm, and says, "It's fine." He turns to Tom awkwardly, pressed too close on the small couch to really face him. "I made a mistake." He takes a breath and rubs his chest. "I made a lot of mistakes, actually."</p><p>Tom shrugs. "Have you tried not fucking up?"</p><p>"<em>Thomas—</em>"</p><p>But Edamura is laughing. He sags against Salazar again and this time stays where he lands, like all that was holding him up has finally gone out of him. "Yeah," he chokes out. "Any time I want."</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>"You take the bed tonight." </p><p>Edamura gives him an unimpressed look. "I'm not making you sleep on the couch in your own home again."</p><p>"I don't want you to bleed on the couch. It's new." Not true, and never mind that Edamura all but paid for it, and for everything else in the place.</p><p>Edamura folds his arms. Salazar folds his. He's got the better portion of a foot over the kid, but Edamura doesn’t cow easy. Maybe he looked like it at first, before he started pulling guns on people and making casual threats. They square off and it feels like he's already lost.</p><p>Well. At least the bed is a California king.</p><p>Edamura takes his side of it gingerly but somehow it's not awkward. Salazar has lived too much of life to have anything but perennial gratitude he's got a bed to sleep in at all and maybe Edamura has seen enough of life too, because he sighs when he slips between the sheets with a world weariness that sounds earned.</p><p>"What are you working in anyway?" Edamura thinks to ask at last.</p><p>"I'm a security consultant." Salazar snorts. "Cassano gave me a good reference. Mostly I think people are shocked no one's shot him yet." Less due to his skills as a bodyguard than bribery, but if it gets him paid, it’s fine by him. </p><p>"Ha." Edamura rolls to face him. "I can vouch for that."</p><p>Salazar rolls his eyes in the dark.</p><p>The first time was instinct. Of course Cassano would set off an explosion to escape. He was a slimy, wily son of a bitch, and maybe Salazar would have seen it coming if he weren't too busy trying to figure out why the two-bit con artist with a soft spot for kids was risking it all for his sorry ass. And then the screams to get to cover, and Edamura turning to look instead of dropping the redhead and running. Rookie's first live fire incident. Salazar covered him half by instinct and half by chance.</p><p>The second was a choice and he can still remember the moment he made it, because Cassano had Edamura's blood on his hands, and suddenly Salazar couldn't live another minute without Cassano's blood on his. Afterward he picked the kid up—so much fight in such a small package—and carried him back, which was another choice. Salazar could have left him there, gone to ground, gotten out. It didn't take a genius to figure out he was going to end up charged with something. </p><p>It worked out, in the end.</p><p>If he has any regret, it's maybe this: when he carried the kid back, he thought he was carrying him to safety. If he’d known it would end up with Edamura on his doorstep almost cut in half and a month’s worth of a sleep in debt, he'd have carried him home instead right then and there.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>It's been a lot of years since he shared his bed with anyone, but it works out. Done is the sprawling; Edamura either sleeps like dead weight used to a bed one fourth the size or doesn't sleep at all. That second night, Salazar wakes to the feeling of the sheets shifting as Edamura rises somewhere around three in the morning. It's none of Salazar's business what he's doing but after ten minutes of straining to listen for the sound of the front door opening, he follows.</p><p>Downstairs, Edamura is nowhere to be found, no lights on—but he would have heard if he left, and there's no note. He'd leave a note. </p><p>A light catches the corner of his eye after a moment, the tiny flicker of a lighter, and there Edamura is at the table on the patio, staring at the flame. </p><p>"Sorry," Edamura offers when Salazar opens the sliding glass door. "I woke you up."</p><p>Salazar shrugs and then grunts because it's dark and even the Los Angeles night isn't bright enough that Edamura can see him. Not that he’s looking. He’s too busy staring at the lighter to see anything else. On, off, on again. </p><p>It's macabre. Tom taught him that one, fresh out of an honors English class that had him spitting out twenty-dollar words, but Salazar couldn’t quite pin the definition down.</p><p>He pulls out a chair for himself. "I was awake."</p><p>"I don't suppose you've got a cig?” Edamura asks.</p><p>"No," Salazar says after a beat. "Since when are you..."</p><p>Edamura puts the lighter down and stretches, folding his arms behind his head. "You're right. I’m not." He breathes deep. "Not anymore. Don't you want to ask? About anything?"</p><p>"No."</p><p>"But what if I'm in trouble?"</p><p>"Are you?" Stupid question. Of course he is. "No, don't answer that."</p><p>"But what about Tom?"</p><p>"What about him? You wouldn't put him in danger."</p><p>It comes out of nowhere. Edamura slaps the lighter and his palm both flat on the rickety wrought iron table with a bang. "How do you know?" he snaps.</p><p>Salazar tips his head back and wishes it wasn’t dark. It’s not like he hasn’t heard Edamura mad before. It’s not Edamura hasn’t told him off. He rolls his words around trying to make them the right shape, but Salazar has always been shit at that. Always. </p><p>"You're not him," he says finally. "I don't know what the fuck happened, but whoever did this? You're not him." Even if you were the one who did, he doesn't add. "It's a choice," he does, and stands from the table.</p><p>Edamura looks up and his eyes reflect a gleam of hazy city light. "It's a choice,” he repeats, too bitter for a man who can’t be thirty yet. “I don’t know how many times I’ve thought I was making the right choice.”</p><p>Salazar steps up beside him and after a moment's thought he sets a hand on Edamura’s shoulder and squeezes it. He's shit at this part too, at the comfort, at knowing what to do and when and how—but maybe that's a choice, too. </p><p>His hand slides from Edamura’s shoulder to his neck, to his cheek, to the mess of hair that’s still cool and damp from the shower. Edamura makes a small sound—an intake of air—and Salazar pulls away. </p><p>“Someone once told me to stop making excuses,” he says, and leaves Edamura to nurse his regret. </p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>Edamura stays. </p><p>Every day Salazar expects to wake up to an empty bed and a note on the kitchen table, but instead he wakes up one morning to the smell of something cooking and comes downstairs to see Tom eating what looks like a no less than six egg omelet while their apparent chef scrolls through what has to be a recipe website on Salazar's laptop on the counter. When he gets back from a consult a day later, the floors are mysteriously clean. Another day and a few hours of terrible client calls later, he encounters Edamura shirtless and oil smeared coming out from the garage, and the next time he gets in the Toyota, it drives like a car half its age. He works odd hours in odd places. Edamura does too, but quieter, filling in the gaps. He goes shopping, helps Tom with geography homework, cleans the fridge, tries to fix the bathroom faucet and fails. </p><p>Every day Salazar waits for the note, but when it comes at last, it says simply, <em>Looking for work. I'll pick up dinner.</em></p><p>Something is scribbled underneath it, unintelligible until he realizes it's some sort of character—the dancing burger on the sign down the street, maybe, and good, but he better be prepared to fight Tom for every fry in the bag. </p><p>When Edamura gets back, it's at four in the evening and he’s got Tom and two greasy takeout bags in tow, both of their mouths already stuffed with fries, mid-argument about something that Salazar can’t understand a word of.</p><p>Salazar catches himself smiling when they come in the door, and again as he watches their silent war of stealing food off each other's plates, and once more when he notices the smear of ketchup on Edamura's cheek. He almost reaches out to wipe it away before he stops himself and wonders what the hell he’s thinking.</p><p>“How’d it go?” he asks instead.</p><p>"I think I got a job."</p><p>"As a mechanic?" Tom asks.</p><p>Edamura rolls his shoulder. "No." Dismissive; he didn't even consider it. Too obvious, maybe, for a man trying to lose one life and build another—only Salazar hadn't realized until this moment that's what he was trying to do. "There's a coffee place,” Edamura is saying. “It's trendy. They like that I'm multilingual. Hey, maybe I can start paying rent."</p><p>As if.</p><p>"Yeah!" Tom jumps in. "You should pay it to me." </p><p>"Oh? Gonna give him your room?” Salazar teases.</p><p>"Pshh, no. Like he needs it." He gives them both a heavy look that isn't half as wise or knowing as he thinks it is. "But as co-owner—"</p><p>"You don't own shit," Salazar mutters, and earns himself both a scandalized cry of <em>Dad</em> and a snort from Edamura. "What do you want money for?"</p><p>Tom shifts in his seat. "There's this game—"</p><p>Edamura lights up and spits out a series of words that Salazar isn't even sure <em>are </em>words but apparently are something to do with a video game system and a game that's must-play though by that point he's tuned out, listening more to the cadence of their chatter than trying to comprehend it. "I swear, you two…"</p><p>"You love us," Tom insists.</p><p>And yes, he realizes. That’s a little on the nose. </p><p>Edamura waits until Tom is out of the room for the serious part of the conversation. Salazar is geared up for the fight as soon as Edamura catches his eye, all his arguments already laid out. The kid—no, Edamura—is an adult and he’s probably seen more money and lived more of life than Salazar has in forty odd years, but the idea of him leaving now, holing up alone in some shitty Los Angeles apartment block to hide from whatever he thinks is chasing him… It makes Salazar’s skin crawl. It isn’t about owing him anything, he tells himself, and then realizes it’s true—but before he can start to wonder what it is about, Edamura puts his cards on the table. </p><p>"I really will pay rent,” he says, voice colored desperate. “I'll even get my own bed." </p><p>Salazar almost chokes on his bite but is grateful because it's the only thing that keeps him blurting out something stupid while all his arguments die in his chest.</p><p>"Where would you put it?" he manages to get out.</p><p>Edamura doesn’t miss a beat. "The garage.”</p><p>Salazar rolls his eyes. "You know there are black widows in there."</p><p>"I'm not scared of spiders," Edamura insists, though two nights he back found one in the shower and screamed loud enough to wake Tom and Salazar both and treat them to the dubious sight of Edamura buck naked and cowering in the hall. </p><p><em>It's just really big</em>, he said while Salazar draped a towel over him, trying not to let his eye linger in the search for other scars, other clues. Tom, bleeding heart, captured the thing in a cup and escorted out outside. It was <em>really big</em>, after all, but it took every bit of Salazar’s composure to not tease Edamura up a wall for it.</p><p>He ruffles Edamura’s hair and pretends it's a normal gesture even though he’s done it twice now and it’s been something new both times. Edamura’s hair is about twice as soft as he’s prepared for and Edamura leans into the touch—</p><p>Salazar tears his hand away. "How about we split the difference and you get me a fancy coffee now and then.”</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>It seems like nothing will change. It seems like nothing will change, and then they're watching the news one night over homework and late coffee and quiet commiseration, and something in the room shifts. He sees Edamura focus on the news over his shoulder, sees his pupils widen, his cheeks go hollow and the high-flushed red Salazar has memorized over the course of his illustrious career—usually moments after Cassano had him put someone on their knees and start asking questions.</p><p>A quick glance at the television doesn’t give him a hint. It's a news story set somewhere in China. The picture doesn’t show any familiar blond head of hair, or even red. Only a petty drug lord trying to go straight, maybe, his cadre arrayed around him in long coats, the type of people Cassano went through like tissue paper.</p><p>"Is he the one?" Salazar asks, not sure what he means, or who. </p><p>Edamura doesn't nod, but puts his face in his hand, and Salazar decides it doesn't matter who did what. It's simply imperative they never get close enough to Edamura to do it again. Salazar was a highly paid bodyguard for a few years; this is right up his alley.</p><p>Salazar stands, pulls Edamura's hand from his face, and leads him to the bedroom—their bedroom—by the same hand. Tom watches them go, his math homework forgotten, but Salazar shakes his head and prays for once the kid won't eavesdrop. </p><p>Inside the bedroom he pushes Edamura onto the bed and then taps his shoulder. “Shirt off.”</p><p>The haunted look in his eyes exchanges with something shocked. "Bandage," Salazar clarifies. The same as every night, though it won't need many more. Edamura is naked from the waist up by the time he gets back from the bathroom with the gauze in hand, but Salazar has to pause before he approaches because it’s been weeks since Edamura looked this way. He nearly thought they were clear of the blast zone, but then, it’s always easier getting into a mess than out of one. Maybe this is par the course.</p><p>In silence he peels off the old gauze, wipes down what's left of the line of scab, clips and pastes the gauze over his chest. Edamura sits back on his elbows for it, head turned aside, avoiding looking at the wound or Salazar. </p><p>"You don't need to do this anymore," Edamura says. </p><p>Salazar glances at him but doesn't reply. If the kid thinks he knows pigheaded, he’s got nothing on Salazar. He’d be happy to go toe to toe and find out. "Yeah, I saw how good you are at it."</p><p>"I was messed up back then."</p><p>It's a test of will that Salazar doesn't roll his eyes but only listens, tapes the last of the gauze, and lets his palm linger against the kid’s chest, and waits.</p><p>It gives all at once. Edamura lies back in their bed, covers his eyes with his forearm, and then the words come falling out of him. "That guy on the TV—he's part of a smuggling ring. They all are. Drugs, money—” he chokes and swallows; Salazar feels the chest under his hand jump, “—kids. They were selling kids.”</p><p>There it is.</p><p>His face is still hidden. Salazar has to stop himself from reaching out and taking Edamura’s hand, tilting Edamura’s chin and making him look.</p><p>"That was the job,” he says at last. His breath shakes on the intake. He’s crying. “I was selling kids."</p><p>Salazar couldn't speak if he wanted to. He's thinking of the way Edamura looked at Tom the day they first met, how something in Salazar’s chest loosened in an instant at the sight of them together. Edamura gave up everything for them—for Tom.</p><p>"I thought, okay, it's fine, we're going to get them out, but—but I messed it up—or I thought I messed up—but it was just another stupid trick—"</p><p>He starts, stops, starts again, and this is how it comes, in fits and pieces that don't seem to make a whole picture until they do, slotting into place one after the other and this is it, Salazar realizes. This is how you take a man that gave up his conmen friends to save one lowlife bodyguard and a kid he knew for a few hours and turn him into the thing that landed on Salazar's doorstep. </p><p>By the time Edamura gets to the part about his dad, he's got both hands over his face and his crying has turned messy. Salazar is sitting next to him on the bed, hand still pressed to Edamura’s chest, every breath and sob traveling up his arm. It’s a story about revenge, and he was right: when Edamura went off, it left a mark. </p><p>He eases himself down on the bed, his greater weight shifting it enough that Edamura tips into him a little. It startles the kid into looking at him, finally.</p><p>"I'm not wild about you working with Cassano, but—they think you're dead?" Salazar murmurs.</p><p>"I swear if I thought they could have followed me, I wouldn't have—"</p><p>"That's not what I mean, kid." </p><p>Edamura winces. "Kid? You know, I'm almost thirty."</p><p>"Edamura," he amends. The name sounds odd in his mouth. “Sorry.”</p><p>Somehow this earns him a smile, pathetic as it is. "Makoto is fine.”</p><p>"Makoto." He tries to say it just the same way, the same cadence. "If they think you’re dead, you’re safe. That’s what I meant." He realizes he still has his hand on Edamura’s chest—on Makoto’s chest, and pulls it back, only realizing they’re too close for that when his hand lands on Makoto’s instead. It doesn’t bother him, and it must not bother Makoto, because he grabs Salazar’s hand and holds it. </p><p>His eyes are wet and red and so are his cheeks, and Makoto is right: he’s not a kid that needs his tears wiped, but Salazar wants to anyway. He makes himself let go and stand instead, aiming for the shower that'll be at least as long as it takes for him to cool his temper and the odd heat in his chest that has to be a part of it. "There's a gun taped to the back of the headboard,” he offers as he gathers clothes. "And above the door in the closet downstairs." As he's walking out the door he remembers, "And a baseball bat under the couch. Just so you know."</p><p>"I'm not shooting anyone!" Makoto whisper-yells after him.</p><p>No, but Salazar might.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>Something changes, but not in the way he thought, and in the aftermath, Makoto gets better. He was good, he was fine, and he might have lived with them another year without Salazar realizing the difference, but now when Salazar wakes up to the shifting of sheets, it’s a face pressing against his back and a thin arm snaking around his waist. When he gets scared, he shows it. When he hates himself, he shows that, too. The coffee shop makes more sense now. Of course he doesn’t want to be found. Petty drug crime is one thing—what he was in is another beast entirely, and if someone decides the lack of a body is reason enough to keep looking for him, it won't take them long to figure out Los Angeles is where he went to ground. </p><p>But his hair gets a little longer, and he gets the color back in his face. He smiles more, and his eyes get brighter.</p><p>Once, in a moment of weakness and boredom, Salazar looks up a photo of the woman Makoto used to work for. He doesn’t have to look far. Google news stories pop up one after another after her brief stint as a missing person, and almost all of them used the same photo: a dark paparazzi shot taken outside a building showing a woman stepping out of a black sedan. She’s elegantly dressed in traditional clothing, and the only other figure in the photo is the man holding the door for her. He’s her size and lithe, his hair is slicked back, the lines of his face smoothed in practiced stillness, his expression notable because he isn’t wearing one. Salazar leans over to glance at the man asleep beside him and tries to make the two images into one. Maybe if he pushed the hair back, added back in the sunken eyes. Familiar, again. That’s the look of a man who’s gotten tired of telling himself he’s got a reason for doing what he’s doing. Of course, Makoto didn’t do it for the money. At least Salazar could look at his bank account at the end of a shit week and know he was trading his peace of mind for something real. </p><p>Makoto got the guilt, no consolation prize. Maybe it’s worse to think you’re doing the right thing—the real right thing—all along and have the rug pulled out later. The man in the photo could make a deal with Cassano. The man in the photo could be the heir to a crime syndicate. The man in the photo could stand on an auction house stage and—do the things he did.</p><p>Salazar does reach down, does push the hair back. He still can’t quite make their faces match, but maybe it’s something else, something intangible.</p><p>The forehead under his hands wrinkles, and Salazar pulls away. “What’s up?” Makoto asks in a rasp, without opening his eyes.</p><p>“Nothing,” Salazar tells him. “Go back to sleep.”</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>It takes a few weeks of cajoling, but Tom manages to convince him on a Tuesday in March that they need to crash Makoto’s coffee shop. </p><p>They aim for a time when the shop won’t be busy. Tom is at a weird phase of thinking sneaking out of high school to go to a coffee shop is the peak of cool, as if he needs the caffeine. It's better than the alternative, Salazar tells himself, as if his son isn’t his polar opposite at that age. The worst he’s done is hide a bad report card and they worked that out fine when Salazar found it and couldn’t stop laughing because he’d managed to raise a son who thought a C was a bad grade. </p><p>The street outside the coffee shop is busy, but the patina of dust and grunge that lays across the city most of the year has been washed clean by the feeble rain they got in winter, so it almost looks bright.</p><p>True to form, the only customers are what might be college students off in a window corner. Makoto is behind the counter taking notes on a legal pad, hair over his face. He looks up when they walk in and Salazar is treated to the striking sight of a smile curling across his face.  Every day he looks better; they must get twice the business with him behind the counter.</p><p>“Hey,” Makoto says. “What can I get you two handsome gentlemen? On the house." </p><p>At this, a woman pokes her head in from the kitchen. "On the house?" she asks pointedly.</p><p>"Oh,” he waves at her and then gestures to Salazar and Tom, "This is my…" </p><p>He watches Makoto pick up and discard <em>roommate </em>and <em>friend </em>and a few other words before he slides his gaze to Salazar desperately. Tom looks really delighted at the revelation that Makoto doesn't have an easy answer for what should be an easy question. It is an easy question. </p><p>Salazar reaches over the cover counter to shake the woman's hand. "We live together."</p><p>She quirks her brow and smiles and shakes Tom's hand too, and then sits back on her heels and looks over the three of them. "What a handsome family."</p><p>
  <em>Family.</em>
</p><p>Tom sniffs and smiles and raises an eyebrow. "It's fine miss, you don't have to lie. I know I got all the looks."</p><p>"You wish," Salazar snorts, though it might be true. The kid was born to be a heartbreaker with those curls and the baby face he must have inherited from his mother because he sure as hell didn't get it from Salazar. </p><p>Of course, he can't drop it. Tom leans halfway across the counter and asks Makoto, "Which one of us is better looking?” Because, of course, Makoto's word is still law. </p><p>Makoto replies by dropping the mug he's holding. He disappears behind the counter and jumps back up, mug whole and in hand with a sigh of relief. "I think I have to plead the, uh, the fourth."</p><p>Salazar shares a look with the woman who is doing a shitty job of hiding a grin.</p><p>"It's the fifth. And you can't."</p><p>"Then," Makoto gives a helpless shrug, his eyes tracing over Salazar vaguely but in a way that isn’t vague at all, "age before beauty." </p><p>Tom gives him a disgusted look that means they've reached the point past what his fourteen-year-old mind can comprehend, which is a relief. "Whatever. Is it my hair? Do you think people without hair are good looking?”</p><p>"No," Salazar pulls him back from the counter. He has hair. Arguably, more of it. "It's that you're fourteen. Knock it off." To Makoto he murmurs, "Age, seriously?"</p><p>Makoto flushes. </p><p>They get their drinks and Makoto takes his break with them at one of the cafe tables on the sidewalk out front. The sad little ornamental cherry trees they plant in the sidewalk all over this side of the city are in full spring bloom. Tom treats them to the latest school gossip both of them pretend to care about, Makoto's thigh brushing against his at the small table. They get a couple odd looks. Salazar in his black suit, Edamura in the pastel apron, both of them playing counsel to an overeager teen as he waxes poetic about the tragedies of an hour-long algebra class. It's good. It's better than good.</p><p>“So you like working here?” </p><p>Makoto jumps at the question and looks up at Salazar with a grin like he’s getting away with something. “Yeah, honestly… I really do.”</p><p>It settles in his chest, that smile, because there's nothing in it of the man in the paparazzi photo. Nothing in it practiced or fake, and Salazar remembers: he’s lost his life three times over, crawled back, tried to do right, done worse, and crawled back from that, too. Salazar only had to do it the once. </p><p>He wants to lean in closer, get a better look at his eyes and the lines around his mouth when he smiles, like the secret to it all is hidden there somewhere. </p><p>“Good,” he murmurs. "You're—happy."</p><p>Not a question. A little bit of an ask. Makoto's smile widens, the leg against his shifts, as he moves closer.</p><p>"Yeah. Yeah, I am."</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>Three nights, two bad late-night shows, and one beer later, Makoto kisses him. They're on the couch, windows open to let in the night breeze that comes off the Pacific and over the city, the low sound of crickets almost as loud as the canned laughter on the television, neither of them really paying attention anymore. He realizes Makoto is looking at him. When he turns, the question on his lips ends up on Makoto's instead, and then the world spins. </p><p>Only once. Only because he didn't see it coming. He's paid to do better than that. </p><p>Makoto is young, with more good and guts and raw determination in him than Salazar is sure he ever had. If he had more, he might have the courage to pull away, stand up, and let silence be a no, let Makoto assume the worst and live with the shame. Maybe that would be an end to it. But Makoto is hot—a month of L.A. heat come early, all at once, right against him, and something else. Something that’s been simmering in the pit of his stomach for weeks now, he realizes as Makoto starts to pull away. Salazar pulls him back. He gets a hand on Makoto's jaw and another under his thigh to hoist him over so neither of them are craning their necks, and then he can’t stop.</p><p>It’s three months of trying not to think about how soft that hair would be under his hand, with the right grip. Three months of a leg hooked over his when he woke up. Three months of imagining up little favors that might put a smile on that face. Makoto’s body fits right against his, it turns out, barely a gap, and when Salazar fits his hand over Makoto’s hip, he gets closer. Makoto can't keep his hands still. He drags one down Salazar’s chest until he can get under his shirt and down to bare skin. His fingers are delicate, but callused. The years Salazar was paid to keep watch over Cassano and his endless supply of drugged up girls less than half his age soured him on the prospect—on the whole thing. It’s been a long time since he had this, and longer since he wanted it this much.</p><p>He makes himself pull away in the end, only because Makoto starts rolling against his hips and this isn’t where he wants that to happen. </p><p>Makoto stares at him dazedly, mouth red. “Is this okay?” he asks in a voice that’s too low. </p><p>“Yeah,” Salazar tells him, and discovers his voice is the same octave off normal with need so outsized that it seems like it’s pressing on his chest from the inside out. “Upstairs.”</p><p>Makoto blinks, swallows. "Right, yeah." He lifts himself out of Salazar’s lap gingerly—for a moment he’s hovering above and that view almost makes Salazar pull him back down. He has to steady himself before he can follow, going through the motions of turning off the television and downstairs lights like he's trying to operate someone else's body. </p><p>The shower is on by the time he gets upstairs, which gives him time to sit at the edge of their bed and think. Not something he used to be given to. He made mistakes, over and over, told himself they weren’t mistakes and did it all over again.</p><p>Makoto can’t be one. That’s not an option. </p><p>He hears the water turn off, waits for Makoto to appear, waits for the punch of doubt to hit, but it doesn’t come. Instead, Makoto walks in with the towel around his waist, dripping water on the hardwood floor, and Salazar’s first thought is that he better not slip on it. His second is that the scar that bisects Makoto’s chest looks better than it did two weeks ago when they took the gauze off for the last time. The third is that he wants to touch as much of the body in front of him as he can. He wants, for the sake of wanting, and it’s been a long, long time. </p><p>He holds out a hand. Makoto takes it after a moment, but still stands that few feet away awkwardly. </p><p>Salazar takes a steadying breath. “This is your choice. It doesn’t have to be—”</p><p>Makoto is in his space before the words get halfway out, a body in his lap, hands on his face. The way he kisses, he’s going to get beard burn, and the thought makes Salazar almost laugh.</p><p>“What?” Makoto pulls back.</p><p>Salazar tugs at the towel still around his waist. “Can I take this off?” It seems courteous, though maybe Makoto isn’t used to courteous, because he quirks his brow. </p><p>“Yeah,” he says, and, “It’s been a while. Just warning you.”</p><p>It’s his turn to look unimpressed. “I think we have different definitions for that.”</p><p>Which is a problem, actually, because there’s nothing in the house for this. Not a damn thing. It’s not like he was going to have anyone over with his son around, because getting him back was a miracle and going straight was another. They’ll make do, he tells himself, and pulls the towel from around Makoto’s waist, throws it lazily in the direction of the chair. Makoto helps him do the same with his own shirt, and then goes for Salazar’s pants, too. Why do you wear slacks at home?" he mutters like it's a question he's always wanted to ask. </p><p>Salazar shrugs and pushes him back on the bed to step out of them. "Looks good."</p><p>And apparently that answer is the right one. When he turns, Makoto is staring at him, eyes black in the light from the lamp on the side table, breathing hard already. Salazar crawls over him. This, at least, he knows how to do. </p><p>Makoto gasps at the first touch of his mouth. He can’t stay still; Salazar has to pin his hips to the bed while Makoto’s hands grasp uselessly at the sheets. It’s nothing like he remembers it, but maybe he was never so invested before. Every soft breath, every choked sound Makoto makes travels straight through him, and when Makoto slaps at his shoulder, he’s so lost in it that it takes him a moment to come back to himself and pull away. </p><p>Salazar frowns up at him.</p><p>"I want you," Makoto tells him, not with the performed need he's had to watch at least a hundred of Cassano's flings fake, but with what might be real desperation. </p><p>It's hard to pin down though since he's already got Salazar. He quirks his brow. "What?"</p><p>"Do you actually want me to say it?" </p><p>His unimpressed stare has to be answer enough, because Makoto lifts himself off the bed enough to stare down and say in clear, precise syllables, "Fuck me." The words punch through him, though they shouldn't be a surprise. Makoto follows it with a desperate groan of, "Please," that would have Salazar on his knees if he weren't already occupied. </p><p>"I don’t know..." It's the hardest thing he's ever had to say.</p><p>The body under his hands stills for the first time. "I can be quiet," he offers pathetically. </p><p>Salazar looks up at him. "I don’t want you to be quiet." Though then he imagines putting a hand over that mouth, the breath against his palm, the muffled cries, and it's workable. The issue is there's no artful way to tell Makoto the first time they fuck, he wants it to be loud, and he wants it to be good, and privacy in a thin-walled stucco house is hard to find. “That’s not…”</p><p>Makoto wilts back into the sheets miserably. “It’s not a big deal—anything is fine.” </p><p>He means it, too. Salazar can’t recall feeling this particular brand of frustration before. He wants. Of course, he wants. It should be obvious. He’s painfully hard, and every slide of that body against his, every accidental motion Makoto makes, it gets harder to push aside. “I want you,” he says, and bends to press his mouth against Makoto’s chest, biting his way up,  trying to slake the need pounding in his chest. He’s too old to feel this much.</p><p>Makoto drags a hand up his back. “It’s okay,” he says again. “I know it’s a lot.” </p><p>He’s right but for none of the reasons he thinks he is. </p><p>In answer, Salazar presses their hips together, to make sure he knows. It elicits another gasp, an involuntary intake of breath. “I want to fuck you,” Salazar says against his ear. ”But this isn’t Cassano’s place. I don’t keep shit like that here. I didn’t know this was going to happen. Next time, I promise.”</p><p>Makoto’s stiffens. He pushes Salazar away. “That’s it?”</p><p>“I’m not fucking you—raw.” It’s crude; his voice sounds rough to his own ears. Makoto looks as if he’s been slapped and is thinking maybe it wouldn’t be a bad idea actually, which it would, but then he opens his mouth, and laughs. Laughs so hard he covers his face and rolls onto his side. Salazar sits back and stares down at him. It’s not a joke.</p><p>Makoto looks up at him from between his fingers. “I took care of it.” </p><p>Salazar doesn’t know what he’s talking about until Makoto reaches out and grabs his hand and pulls him in—and, oh. </p><p>The whole night spins on its axis and reorients around him. "You," he starts and stops and then buries his face against Makoto's temple and hisses out, "I thought we didn't have anything."</p><p>"Went shopping weeks ago," Makoto says from under the hand he has over his face. "It's really hard to sleep next to someone who looks like you without, <em>ah—</em>" </p><p>Salazar pushes at him, pushes into him, just to get him to stop talking, because this means at some point in the last few weeks Makoto was getting off to the thought of this. Of him. Of them, together.  He watches as Salazar kneels below him and then pulls Makoto’s knees apart and settles those long legs around his hips. He bends at the same time Makoto reaches for him and this time the kiss is desperate. Makoto ends up in his arms, in his lap, biting at his bottom lip while Salazar fingers him open. At the first touch, Makoto gasps against his mouth and by the time he's found what he's looking for, Makoto's abandoned the kiss and is breathing against his neck with a shattered cadence. </p><p>"I lied, I can't be quiet," he says high and tight.</p><p>Salazar pulls his fingers out and listens to the cut off moan that earns him. "I know."</p><p>He lifts Makoto again so he's the one staring up as he lines up and then slides in. Not all at once, not far at all, because Makoto is tight and even that first push is enough to have him shaking. He makes a punched-out sound that he stifles with his own hand and Salazar waits until he relaxes, waits until he's sure it's time, and starts pushing his way in. </p><p>Slow is better and at least age has given him patience. Breath by breath, until Makoto is settled in his lap again exactly where he started, and gripping Salazar's shoulder so hard that he can already feel the prick of halfmoon cuts he’s going to have there in the morning. </p><p>"That's deep," Makoto murmurs, voice shaking at the edges. </p><p>He's right. Salazar never really got the appeal of being inside someone without doing something about it, but now it clicks. They stay that way for another moment, long enough for Salazar to kiss him lazily, without intent. "Are you good?"</p><p>Makoto nods, and then, "Yeah." </p><p>And before Salazar can move, Makoto rises on his knees, and falls, and then does it again but faster. Salazar holds onto his hips, digs his thumbs in at the juncture and tries to think of nothing but the body in his arms and the sound of Makoto's breaths. Age has given him patience and age has given him stamina, and soon the sounds Makoto is making are loud even half-muffled. Salazar spares one hand to cover Makoto’s mouth for him completely, the hot breath against his palm all he thought it would be. Every sound vibrates against his hand. Next time, he swears to himself. Next time, he can be as loud as he wants. They'll go somewhere. </p><p>When Makoto's rhythm falters, Salazar bends him down to the bed without letting him go, pressing him back into the sheets with as much of his body weight as he can without it being too much. Makoto keens against his palm and grips any part of Salazar he can reach, hanging on hard enough to bruise. </p><p>He's close. With his length trapped between their bodies, closer. Salazar slows to draw it out, pulls his hand from Makoto's mouth to spread the hair from his eyes, which are wet and unfocused. And that's something unexpected. The way the sight of him like this is almost enough on its own to send him over that edge that's been building from the moment Makoto kissed him. Maybe longer. </p><p>He feels the moment it snaps, feels the sound, feels Makoto go tight around him, and even if he wanted to hold out, he couldn't at that. He works Makoto through it, until he's twisting in place, overwhelmed, and then pulls out. Makoto makes a shocked sound against his ear, maybe at the overstimulation or the suddenness. Salazar comes into his own hand, adding to the mess between them. All sound stops for that instant as pure relief courses through him, a snapping of tension that feels like it's been winding up for years inside him. All gone, all at once. </p><p>He releases Makoto back into the sheets with care and sits back, staring down at him. </p><p>They've made a mess. Makoto, specifically, is a mess. In the low light of the one lamp, his skin glistens. The spend on his stomach, the rise and fall as he tries to catch his breath, his lazy, satisfied smile. It all clicks into place. This is what he's got. This is what he's keeping. It's simple as that.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>The house is hot in summer, but he presses Makoto to his chest anyway, to have him there. </p><p>This is what he learns: Makoto likes the heat. He likes to be pushed down into the too-thick comforter, likes to be close, likes the sweat and mess of it. He's fastidious everywhere else, but in bed he lets that go, and it's Salazar that has to fetch a towel and wipe off the worst of it later, all while Makoto lies there lax. Then Salazar settles behind him under the sheets and wraps an arm over his chest—the opposite of their usual position with Makoto clinging to his back.</p><p>It’s the best sleep he’s had in months.</p><p>The night comes back to him like a punch when he wakes up and the first thing he sees is Makoto naked beside him with the sheets pushed down almost past his hips. Marks scatter his neck, swathes of red that don't make sense until Salazar remembers his unshaven face. It isn't cold in the room, but he pulls the sheets up over Makoto anyway, tucking them in around his shoulders so his head peaks out, almost comically. Makoto is the earliest riser in a house of early risers but if this is the trick to getting him to sleep in, it's a good one. </p><p>Salazar leaves him in pursuit of coffee with the vague intent of bringing a cup back upstairs, though the idea gets shot to hell when Makoto stumbles into the kitchen a minute after him. </p><p>He leans into Salazar's back. "Morning," he says to Salazar's shoulder, and, "Coffee?"</p><p>"Didn't you used to drink tea?" it occurs to him to ask. </p><p>"Time changes a man."</p><p>Salazar snorts and turns around to hand him a coffee, though it means prying Makoto off him to do it, and before he does, it only seems right to wrap an arm around him and lean down for a kiss. A peck, really. </p><p>They're at the table sharing a plate of toast when Tom comes down. No one says anything for a solid ten minutes which is fine by him, until Tom looks over at Makoto and asks, "What happened to your neck?"</p><p>"Nothing." Makoto tries to pull the collar of his loose T-shirt—Salazar's T-shirt, still—up to cover the marks. It doesn't work. All it does is highlight that a handsome swathe from the nape of his neck to his jaw has been rubbed and bit red. </p><p>Salazar touches his beard. “Maybe I should shave.”</p><p>“No!” Makoto grabs his hand and pulls it away. “No, it looks good. I like it. It’s fine, seriously.”</p><p>To his credit, Tom watches all of this in silence. “Are you guys dating now?” He asks after a minute, which is the most equitable way to put it, but still almost has Salazar spitting his coffee across the table.</p><p>Dating. <em>Dating</em>. </p><p>“Yeah,” Salazar admits. “We might even go to In-N-Out later. For a date.” </p><p>“Big spender,” Makoto says from behind his coffee cup, which is doing as good a job keeping the flush in his cheeks hidden as the wide-collared shirt did keeping his neck covered.</p><p>Salazar raises a brow. "I thought you were buying.”</p><p>"Sure.”</p><p>“Wait, for real?” Tom looks between them. "Why can’t I come? That's not fair—"</p><p>So their first date is after the first everything else, and it happens at a cheap drive through with a surly teen in the back asking for extra fries, but it's exactly what he wanted. This is what a family looks like, and he promises himself then and there: no one is taking it from him.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>[<a href="https://twitter.com/arahir/status/1343726115458670593">fic on twitter</a>]</p><p>Thank you for reading all 3 of you who also looked at this pair and went: hmm there is a flavor here. Next and final chapter: Edamura's past catches up with him.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Chapter 2</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Makoto washes up on his porch in January. It takes his past four months to catch up to him. Four months, and longer than Salazar expected. Four months, and long enough that he’s gotten used to it all. Four months, and in the end, it’s by chance they find him at all. </p><p>The two of them are out for a walk, because May is as good as the weather ever gets in Los Angeles, and because he wanted to. Because walking with Makoto is as good as doing anything with him—well, not as good as some, but the best either of them are going to manage around noon on a Tuesday. They find a truck selling sandwiches in the park and buy one to share and then find a bench to sit on while they eat. Salazar considers wrapping an arm around Makoto and then does, because he can, and tries to not be obscenely pleased with himself over all of it. </p><p>It’s the last of the best weather they’ll have all year and it’s already too warm, but Makoto pushes into his side and returns the hold. “Think the kid will be mad we didn’t get him anything?”</p><p>Tom is fresh out of finals—he only cried once, about a class neither Salazar nor Makoto could make heads or tails of, and he got a B in it besides. Now he’s dedicated to a summer of doing nothing but taking up as much of the living room couch as possible for as many hours of the day and night as possible. “Not if we don’t tell him.”</p><p>“Ooh,” Makoto raises a brow. “I didn’t know you were so sneaky.”</p><p>“Yeah, I’ve got all the tricks.” Salazar reaches up and tugs a lock of his hair that isn’t pushed back by the sunglasses pushed up above his forehead—hideous gift kiosk aviators from the time they dragged him to Venice Beach, because he’d never gone and it seemed like he ought to see it at least once. “Hey,” he says to get Makoto to look at him.</p><p>That’s when it happens. That moment: sun on the back of his neck and in Makoto’s hair, wondering if a kiss would be too much. A stranger gasps from a few feet away. Salazar looks up with a glare built to kill, but the woman staring at them has red hair and even though she's traded the shitty counterfeit FBI jacket for jeans and a blouse, Salazar can't forget a face like that. </p><p>"Edamam—Edamura?" she asks.</p><p>It happens so fast it doesn't seem real. Makoto stiffens against him and when Salazar pulls back, Makoto is staring at the woman and his face is pale the way he was on the porch in January, a ghost again, after all this time.</p><p>It feels suddenly like something he's seen before. Like the doctor walking down the hallway with that look on his face the day he learned his wife wouldn't be coming home. His son's face as someone else held his hand, leading him away. That's how it feels, watching Makoto's expression slide from shock to nothing at all. Salazar puts a hand on his shoulder, but Makoto pulls it away and then pulls Salazar up with him. His grip is sweaty and bruising strong as he drags Salazar with him, away from the bench and the woman both. Salazar twists his hand so it's at least a little mutual and resigns himself to glaring grim death at onlookers as Makoto drags him through the park and back to the car. </p><p>"I'm driving," Salazar preempts when they get there.</p><p>Makoto doesn’t argue that point. He doesn't say a word the whole way home, doesn’t make a sound, busy staring out the window, arms clenched tight around himself, fingers pressing white against his skin. Salazar turns up the shitty pop on the radio if only to drown out the silence, though it all sounds like static. He pulls into the garage mechanically, turns off the engine, and tries to think of what he can say and comes up empty. Makoto makes no move to get out. He’s breathing fast. Not hyperventilating, but breathing the low panic of a man who’s had something bad catch his scent. </p><p>At last, he says all at once like he’s forcing the words out of his throat, "They'll find me. They’re going to—to do something to get me back in. They'll do anything. What if—" And Makoto looks at him in horror, Salazar realizes his worst-case-scenario isn’t being found. It isn’t him getting roped into something stupid but them using <em>this </em>against him: Salazar, and Tom, and this life he’s built for himself.</p><p>"No. They wouldn’t. Even if they tried—”</p><p>"You don't know them." His voice is dull now, resigned. “They'll find a way."</p><p>"Makoto," he sighs because he can't do anything else. Everything seems big when you’re scared. He reaches out and curls Makoto into him with one arm around his shoulders, awkward in the space of the car. "Then let’s leave.”</p><p>An open offer. They have the money, the means. Tom is out of school. Nothing stands between them a month of vacation to nowhere, but even as he thinks it, as the silence stretches and the thought settles in the car between them, he knows Makoto isn’t going to agree.</p><p>“I can’t run,” he says finally. Of course he does.</p><p>The resignation in it steals his breath from his chest. Makoto looks up at him, hair curling around his ears, sticking up at odd angles, out of pace with the wrinkle between his eyes.</p><p>"You know they won't give up. I can't—"</p><p>Ah. That’s when it hits: it’s not that he can’t run from this life. It’s that he can’t run from them, and certainly not with anyone else. He is going to run, from them, and from this life, and even if he thinks it won’t work, he’ll do it all the same. The little distinction was lost on Salazar. The nuance. Well, he was always shitty with words. "Don’t. Don't say it." </p><p>Salazar feels frozen to the seat, so he opens the door and steps out into the banality of the garage, because he has to  move and do something. He's too old for it, for this flutter-stomach insecurity. </p><p>"You don't have to figure out anything now," he says to the wall in front of him, not sure if Makoto will even hear, and leaves him in the garage. This is a fight no one can fight for him, and the hardest, too. </p><p>Makoto follows him into the house. "You've got an answer for everything,” he snipes. The edge of anger to the words should be a surprise, but it isn't.</p><p>There’s a note from Tom on the counter—off at a friend’s house, won’t be home for hours. Salazar spares a moment to be grateful for that as he turns on Makoto. "You know I'm bad at this." It isn’t much of an explanation, barely an excuse.</p><p>Makoto’s expression twists into something new and cruel. "At what? At taking in homeless criminals? Yeah, I’m sure. It’s a lot of baggage for a—" he's searching for a word. Salazar dreads it before it comes, and then Makoto says, "—hookup," and it’s worse than he thought it would be.</p><p>It breaks something in him. Salazar takes a step toward him, without threat, and Makoto backs against the counter, shock playing in his eyes, as if he’s only now hearing the word that came out of his mouth. This close, he has to arch his back and crane his neck to meet Salazar's gaze. "Is that what you think this is?" Salazar asks him. It's a simple question, one he already knows the answer to, but he needs to hear the one Makoto thinks he should be giving. That's the distinction. It takes him time. Salazar stares into his eyes, the space between them lit by the single bar of midday spring sun that’s filtered in through the screened kitchen window, watches his mouth open and close, hears him take a breath. He searches Salazar’s face as if the answer is there waiting for him. Salazar says nothing, doesn’t move.</p><p>“No,” Makoto says at last, wretchedly. </p><p>He tips forward, into the body in front of him, pitches himself into a light hold around Salazar’s waist, cheek against his chest. Salazar sets his hand between his thin shoulder blades, roughs the cloth, feels the rise and fall of his chest, the bones that stick out everywhere on him still. Platitudes will do no good; they are, the both of them, far past the point in their lives where platitudes and pretty words will do the trick. So, he doesn’t say that it will be fine, all gold California sunsets and clean streets. This house, hard-won, has cracks in the concrete out front. From the bedroom you can hear sirens one street over, at any hour. The yard is nothing but a strip of fading grass and rusted wrought iron furniture that maybe once was painted white, but it’s still home. It’s still good. Sometimes, it’s the long wanting of something and all its odd flaws that make it sweeter. </p><p>Makoto’s voice is muffled against the cloth of his suit shirt, but still clear enough to make sense. “I want to stay.” It comes out a confession, a weakness, like he thinks he shouldn’t get this, or doesn’t deserve it. </p><p>But finally, it gives Salazar an easy answer. “Then stay.” </p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>Mercifully, they don’t wait more than a week before the fallout. Salazar is surprised it takes them that long; finding Makoto might be looking for a needle in a wide haystack, but Salazar is known. He has a website with his phone number on it, for starters, and a photo Tom made him pose for five or twenty times. Tom put the whole thing together for him and then, at Salazar’s request, had to take off the tacky Los Angeles palm tree motif that he spattered across the whole thing. Security consultant. It sounds like a joke to him, still, but his figure in the background of every picture of Cassano walking out of court with a grin on his face gave him something like cred and he is good at his job. That’s why they hire him. He can’t stop an actor from ending up on the front page of a gossip website, and he can’t stop an internet personality from throwing a party that wrecks their house and reputation, but he can make sure they’re alive at the end of it. That’s what they hire him for. That’s all the smart ones ever need him for. </p><p>He is good at his job. And so, a week after the incident, when the doorbell rings at half past seven with the sun still bright on the street, he knows who it is. Before he even answers the door. </p><p>A full week of little distractions, of driving Makoto to work instead of letting him walk and ride the bus, of finally making him get a phone, of pressing him into the closed door of their room and kissing the frown from his mouth. </p><p>Makoto is in the kitchen when it happens, along with Tom. “I’ll get it,” Salazar says to them, and steels himself. </p><p>This is his job, he tells himself as he opens the door. This is what he’s good at. </p><p>“Hello, Salazar,” the blond says. “Is Edamura here?”</p><p>There are three of them arranged outside on the cracked concrete, and Salazar is grateful his face’s resting state is cold rage, because otherwise he would be laughing. A three-man job. It’s almost touching. They had to fly here. He can see the entire panorama of the scheme laid out before him: the redhead seeing them in the park, rallying the rest, bringing them all here. </p><p>They aren’t bad people. But they’ve made a mistake. He’s not going to let them make a second—not within a hundred miles of Makoto. </p><p>Salazar closes the door behind him and folds his arms. Laurent clears his throat and shares a look with the redhead before he steps forward and sweeps his hand out in an exaggerated gesture. </p><p>“I don’t want to presume, but if we could talk to him for a moment—”</p><p>“No.”</p><p>Laurent’s gaze narrows. “It was quite the disappearing act he pulled.”</p><p>“I heard,” Salazar says calmly.</p><p>They made a mess. That’s what they do: make a mess, use the chaos to get what they came for and get out. It’s impressive. Had it involved anyone but Makoto, he wouldn’t give a rat’s ass, but he wonders how many times part of the mess has been one of their own. He wonders how many times that’s backfired, and how desperately. </p><p>The youngest of them, the girl with the unreadable expression, is staring him down the way she has been since he opened the door. “What, is he your fucking pet?” she mutters under her breath, not trying not to be heard.</p><p>It would be polite to ignore her, but Salazar is done with politeness. “No.”</p><p>She rolls her eyes, shoves her hands in her pockets, and turns. “Whatever. Let us know if he pulls his head out of his ass.” She waves bye, though she only has one finger raised, and walks back to the curb to lean against the hood of the slick black car parked there.</p><p>“Abbie,” Laurent says after, looking pained, and then returns to Salazar, eyes beseeching. “Please. If we could just see him…”</p><p>He really does seem desperate. This can’t be the first time they’ve fucked things up, but now Salazar is sure: this is the first time they’ve had a shot at un-fucking them, and boy are they shit at it. “He doesn’t want to see you.” Salazar lets his voice slide down to something low, the hint of a threat in the back of it. “I don’t give a fuck what you do or where you go as long as you leave him alone. If you go near him, if you go near my son—"</p><p>Laurent shakes his head like they would never dream of using a kid, and, well.</p><p>"If you go near my <em>son</em>," he repeats, "or talk about my son, or think about him, it will be the last mistake you make." That's the best he can do. A simple promise. He goes for one better anyway. "If you care about Makoto’s happiness, leave him out of this."</p><p>"Of course we care,” the redhead says softly, and Salazar believes it. </p><p>He believes it, and remembers the way Makoto looked those months ago, standing exactly where she is now, worn down to his last thread, taut and ready to snap. "No. You need him for something. That's why you're here." <em>Your need isn't greater</em>, he wants to spit at them with that youthful anger he used to be ready with at the slightest insult, and an old anger, a fiercer anger. It's not a perfect family, the three of them, two kids with shitty fathers and a man with more regrets than happy memories, but Makoto has started making pancakes on Saturday mornings and Salazar is teaching them both how not to wreck an American car on Sunday afternoons and every other Friday they pile in together and take a day trip wherever they want, or nowhere at all.</p><p>And, sometimes now, when he wakes up, Makoto kisses him because it's morning and he's there and he's happy. No other reason needed. Salazar has done nothing to earn it, but maybe today he can try.</p><p>"He's happy now. Whatever you're trying to steal, it isn't worth more than that."</p><p>It at least steals the air from their fire, if only for a moment. But people with money can’t stand the thought of not having something they want, the moment they want it. They aren’t saying anything now, though, only staring at him as if he’s actually said something that makes sense—but, no. Not at him, he realizes. Behind him, at the doorway. </p><p>Ah. This, he should have expected.</p><p>Salazar inclines his head to Makoto. His hair is a bit messy, his clothes a little askew, but his eyes. Those are the eyes from the photo he found. He could be staring down the barrel of a gun, could be standing at the edge of a stage, and this is how he's changed. It comes to Salazar like a revelation. It's not the three square meals and a warm bed and not the quiet life and not the sun. This is a man who knows what he wants and is finally willing to use all his cards to play for it.</p><p>"Edamura," Laurent says, and then, "<em>Makoto</em>."</p><p>"No." He makes a cutting gesture with his hand. </p><p>Laurent flinches minutely. His stance changes, a visible pivot. "We need to talk to you."</p><p>"No," Makoto says lightly, like it's easier the second time around. Nothing else. Nothing for anyone to sink their teeth into, nothing for them to whittle away at. A no is, after all, a no. </p><p>It's the redhead who makes the mistake of imploring Salazar once more. "Could we have a moment?" she asks, making him the intruder, as if this is nothing more than some embarrassing family fight. They'll talk sense into him; he's being ridiculous. </p><p>And Salazar realizes he should have brought the bat out with him, something to slap in his palm or wave around a little—that usually did it for the hangers-on at Cassano’s. It  would give him something to grip, at least, instead of his own arms. Annoyance wars with the perilous thought that maybe Makoto will agree and send him inside, and he will have no recourse but to go, because Makoto is his own person. He makes himself look at Makoto, ready to fight him on it, but Makoto gives him a placid look. His thin, clever fingers worm their way under Salazar’s folded arm and hold him that way, looped together. </p><p>"Leave him out of it. Both of them." It's the closest thing to a threat he's ever heard Makoto utter. </p><p>Well, maybe except for the time he pulled a gun on everyone.</p><p>Laurent, briefly wounded, puts a hand over his chest. "We would never. Why does everyone assume that?" The redhead steps closer and jams an elbow into his side. She hisses something wicked into his ear; he droops, pulls himself back together with all the aplomb his illustrious career demands, and nods. "We'll be back," he promises them, less the threat than the comfort of a departing friend. <em>See you soon.</em> </p><p>Of course he will.</p><p>After they've gone and the car is nothing but a fading gleam at the end of the road, Makoto nudges him, presses to his side, and murmurs, "I could have handled them on my own.”</p><p>"I know," Salazar tells him and finds at last that it’s true.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>Two days later at about the same time of heady gold-sky evening, the doorbell rings. Whoever it is gives a knock right after as if to say they saw the no solicitations sign and decided they were exempt. Three guesses who it is and the first two don’t count, Salazar thinks. Makoto isn’t there, at least, off with Tom on some errand, which probably means they're going to come home with something stupid and stupid expensive. Probably yet another game they both suck at, which Salazar will have to sit between them on the couch and play judge and jury over. It figures. </p><p>He's annoyed before he gets to the door and then he opens it to the blond asshole holding a bouquet of flowers the shade of white they use for apologies and hospital get-wells and his annoyance blooms with them. Laurent is barely visible behind a spray of ferns that stick out artfully to one side. </p><p>"Hey," Laurent starts, drawing the word out into something between an apology and a question.</p><p>"He's not here."</p><p>The disjointed sliver of his face that's visible falls. "Ah."</p><p>"He won’t be back for a while.” If Laurent wants to stand there and wait, Salazar has plenty of practice doing the same.</p><p>Laurent sets the vase down. He seems to be discarding and picking up questions as fast as he can come up with them, and it is satisfying to see him off his game, at least. "Does he hate us?" </p><p>"Ask him. I'm not your therapist." Salazar glares down at the bouquet. "I don't know if flowers are going to do it though."</p><p>"Oh, those are for you. A thank you for looking after our lost lamb these past months."</p><p>Salazar quirks one eyebrow and Laurent’s smile goes tight at the edges. “I really did want to talk to you. He’s okay, isn’t he?”</p><p>“Did he look okay last time you saw him?” The time before, he means.</p><p>Laurent sobers. “No. I thought he was dead, honestly.”</p><p>There is a piece of wisdom in that. In the hurt in his voice. In the fall of his eyes to the ground between them. Salazar waits for him to pick the realization up, and then decides he might need a hand. “He told me about that. Told me he learned from the best.” Laurent flinches almost imperceptibly. “But he didn’t do it to hurt you.”</p><p>He did it to leave, which might be worse. There’s leaving someone, and then there’s pretending you’re dead to do it. </p><p>“He’s better now, though. Isn’t he? Cynthia said...” Ah, the redhead. Said what? That she saw them together? Laurent tries to smile at him, and his voice is so odd. It’s between bitter and sweet, tainted with something almost familiar. It takes Salazar only a moment to place it: a specific form of regret. The kind born of knowing he let something he wanted—wanted, in the way a man wants few things—between his fingers and right into someone else’s lap. </p><p>How unexpected. And how stupid to play stupid games with something he wanted that much. The sympathy falls out of Salazar. “You fucked up,” he says lowly. </p><p>Laurent’s eyes widen, and fall once more. “I know,” he says numbly.</p><p>“Get off my porch.”</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>The redhead, Cynthia, tries next, though extraordinarily she displays some tact in the attempt. She doesn’t show up to his house at all. He’s out, fresh from a meeting with a client and sitting in his parked car staring at an invoice when she knocks at the passenger window, and god knows how she found him but at least she hasn’t got flowers. Instead, she raises two to-go cups of coffee in open offer.</p><p>Salazar sighs and unlocks the car door. She slides into the seat and hands him a drink. It’s hot, a splash of cream, no sugar, and it even tastes expensive. She takes a sip of her own and watches the passersby for a moment. </p><p>“We’re not on a job, you know. I’m not, at least. I retired.”</p><p>Sure she did. “Good for you,” Salazar murmurs.</p><p>“How is he?” she asks. “Really?” </p><p>“I already answered that. He’s happy.”</p><p>She hums and blows at the top of her cup. "How can you know? How can you be sure he isn't just… running?"</p><p>Salazar grimaces. "And you've never run?" She doesn't reply, which is an answer all its own. “Everyone runs. It doesn't mean you don't land where you want to be.”</p><p>“And are you happy with that? You don't owe him for the money, you know.” </p><p>The money. He wondered at the time and knows now it was most, if not all, of Makoto’s take from the Cassano job. He didn’t feel guilty at the time for taking it, wouldn’t have known what to do about it if he did, and even now a large part of him considers it backpay. Anyway, when what’s between them is a few saved lives and a new one half-built already, the money doesn’t seem like so much after all.</p><p>Salazar stares her down, so she can see the certainty in his eyes. "No, I don't." </p><p>She searches his face. "I've seen that look before. I'm pretty sure I was the poster child for it, once upon a time. You love him." Her voice has a certain chime to it, a certain wonder as she corrects, "You’re <em>in </em>love with him.” A one-two punch, a gotcha.</p><p>Too bad she’s about a month late to it. “Looks like it.” </p><p>People who think love is a revelation are doing it wrong, he thinks. Love is slow. Love is sure. He's known for weeks, and laughed long and well at himself for it in the quiet of their bed at night, laughed at himself for the precious spill of dark hair on his pillow, the breath tickling the back of his neck, the hand on his shoulder.</p><p>And it's his turn for a question, he decides, now that cat's out of the bag and there's no cause to pretend otherwise. "Why did you do that to him? All of you." She doesn't look at him, and must have no trite reply ready either. "You saw what it did to him the first time." He saw, too, that first time at Cassano’s. That was the moment he knew who Makoto was, and he didn't regret betraying Cassano for a moment after that. Never considered doing otherwise.</p><p><em>Get your rotten life together, </em>Makoto told him, and he has.</p><p>She takes a reedy breath. "Is there any answer I could give that would be good enough?"</p><p>No, there isn't. No answer worth the bloody gauze or the hollow eyes or the few, horrific moments when he's woken to an empty bed and found his lover holed up wherever is quietest trying to work through his guilt. He reaches across her and opens the car door. "Thanks for the coffee," he murmurs. She leaves without another word.<br/>
<br/>
<br/>
</p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>It's the scrappy one that comes last to their door, and Salazar should have expected it.</p><p>Each visit he tells Makoto about in as much detail as he can without embarrassing himself, and it has the comforting rhythm of giving a report to a client, though he never really felt the need much less the desire to gather up Cassano in his arms afterward, or press a deliberately loud kiss to his cheek just to hear Tom squeal at the scandal of it—"I'm right here!"</p><p>And a small, foolish part of him hopes this will be the end of it. One by one they'll come, find a gentle rebuff, and make away again with little fanfare. </p><p>When he opens the door to see her waiting there, it’s almost a relief. Dark hair, cut short, piercing eyes. The girl that showed up at Cassano's mansion one night and never left, though she didn't have the look of the others and Salazar knew at first glance that whatever she was there for, she knew exactly what it was and how to get it. Good riddance, he thought, but now he remembers the security footage and her sneaking into Makoto’s borrowed room in the dark. The way Makoto spoke to her, it was different. The way she talked to him was different.</p><p>She sizes Salazar up from the bottom of the steps. "Can I come in?" she asks, but it isn't a question. Instead, she makes it sound like it's her house and he’s the one standing in her doorway.</p><p>He knows when to pick his fights. Salazar shrugs and steps to the side to invite her inside. She snorts as she passes him, but then the look behind her eyes turns calculating. He's being sized up by a kid one tenth his size. Incredible. </p><p>"Who was it this time?" Makoto asks from the kitchen.</p><p>"Me, asshole,” the girl says.</p><p>Something hits the floor, followed by a, "Fuck."</p><p>When they get to the kitchen, he’s still standing over a dropped cup, luckily unbroken. Salazar picks it up and opens the fridge. “Can I get you anything to drink?” he offers, half-sarcasm. </p><p>“A beer,” she says lightly. </p><p>He gets one for her, and one for Makoto, too, and then decides he might as well get one for himself, too, and carries it to the living room where Tom is sitting on the couch doing that thing where he’s trying so hard not to look like he’s eavesdropping that he’s come all the way around back to suspicious. Tonight he can learn from the best.</p><p>Most of the words from the kitchen are too quiet to pick up, at least to start. At about the five minute mark, it gets loud, though they must both think they’re still being quiet about it. </p><p>“...Seriously,” the girl, Abbie, he remembers, is saying. “I can’t believe you shacked up with the bodyguard. I knew you had a thing for kids.” </p><p>“Don’t bring them into this,” Makoto starts.</p><p>“I’m just saying, I never pegged you for that kind of thing.”</p><p>They hear Makoto stand from his chair. “For what? A family?”</p><p>Her snort is audible. “Oh? Are they your family? That’s fucking great. What about us? You let us think you were dead. You let me think you were dead!” </p><p>“Not for long enough,” Makoto snaps.</p><p>“I forgot what a total bitch you are. If you wanted out, you could have told us.”</p><p>“I did,” Makoto shouts, “over and over. I never wanted to be a part of this. I never wanted to see that old man again either.”</p><p>“So, what, you run to LA to sleep with the last guy you—“</p><p>Salazar can only take so much. He stands from the couch and shakes his head at Tom when he rises to follow, though the show of support is touching. In the kitchen, the two of them are positioned with the dining table between them like it’s the only thing keeping them from tearing into each other. </p><p>“Stop,” he tells them both. Makoto looks at him helplessly. </p><p>His presence breaks some tension in the room at least. The fire in Abbie’s gaze banks a bit. “Look, none of us are saying you have to do another job. Cynthia has her own kid now and she’s retired. It just might have been nice if you fucking told us you were alive.”</p><p>Makoto heaves himself into the chair beside Salazar. “Yeah, because you guys were so great about keeping me in the loop.”</p><p>Under the table, Salazar takes his hand—but the girl is fast. She sees. “So you two really are a thing, huh?” </p><p>It’s not the conversation he wants to have, and he’s willing to bet it isn’t the one Makoto wants to have either, but for the first time it occurs to him to wonder if they were a thing before. He feels a decade too old to deal with the fallout of that. </p><p>“I don’t care,” she adds, managing to sound both dismissive and bored. “None of us do. Is that why you’re acting like this? You could have fucked Cassano and we wouldn’t have cared.” </p><p>Makoto grips his hand like death. Anger, he realizes too late. “Get out,” Makoto says, almost under his breath, like he doesn’t trust himself to say it louder, and Salazar can’t believe this is the part that’s finally got him truly pissed. Not the showing up uninvited, not the clandestine efforts to get back in his good graces, but this—the implication that what’s between them is nothing.</p><p>“Fine,” Abbie says. She slides something onto the table as she stands. A card, with a number on it and nothing else. “Call us when you’re ready.” </p><p>She’s halfway to the door before Makoto asks, “Is my dad—“</p><p>“Yeah. But we figured he should be the last resort. All that blood… It really fucked him up.”</p><p>“Great.”</p><p>"Just talk to him." The offer, open. </p><p>She excuses herself at that. The quiet open and close of the front door leaves them in silence, Makoto with the card in hand, gripped so tight he's bending the corners. "Should I?" he asks.</p><p>"I can't decide for you."</p><p>"Will you come with me?"</p><p>Best not to mention he was planning on showing up regardless of the invitation. In answer he ruffles Makoto's hair with one hand, watches the gesture turn into something softer, and then Makoto leans into it. "You got the better of them twice. Don't forget that."</p><p>"What was the second time?" </p><p>"Getting a real job."</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>He calls. Of course he does, a few days later, with no prompting and company but his own. Salazar hears about it later, in bed that night, poring over the pages of a book he can’t quite make heads or tails of though it seemed like the sort of thing he should read. He wants to be the sort of person that reads. It’s a long list of small ambitions he’s been hacking away at since he rebooted life.</p><p>Makoto is watching him; he feels the gaze, and the hand tugging at his shirt, and then, quietly, he asks if Salazar will come with him somewhere the following day. </p><p>He needn’t have asked. </p><p>Tom wants to come, but Salazar baits him with the prospect of most of a night home alone, and that’s enough to sway him into staying. Privately, to the side, Salazar slips him five dollars on the promise that if it’s needed, he’ll call Makoto’s number and pretend there’s an emergency so they have an exit strategy at least. Being a bodyguard taught him a few tricks, and sitting through bad client meetings taught him more.</p><p>The restaurant they end up at is the type with non-optional valet parking, and this, at least, he’s used to. He hands over the keys and catches himself before he can direct Makoto through the door with a hand at the small of his back. Unnecessary; a gesture borne more of worry and the desire to touch than the need to control. His hand brushes Makoto’s back anyway, under the hem of his jacket. </p><p>Makoto glances back at him, and some of the hardness bleeds out of his gaze. He’s nervous, but he’s not alone.</p><p>A host leads them to a private room. There waiting, arrayed around the table like they’re reenacting the last supper, are the usual suspects, and a few Salazar doesn’t recognize. An elderly woman, maybe Korean, who looks so pleased to see Makoto that Salazar finds he likes her out of turn. A man who looks about the same age, short, wily. He looks equally as pleased. Maybe there are at least a couple other people in Makoto’s corner, he thinks, and then catches himself. </p><p>No matter how happy they are to see him, they all did this to him. </p><p>And then he sees a familiar face at the far end of the table. The man is only half-risen out of his chair, seemingly frozen, but as Salazar watches, he forces himself to stand, straightens his coat, and looks at Makoto with no expression at all. Salazar has never seen him before, but the hair, the eyes, the high cheeks and thin frame are all qualities he’s memorized on Makoto’s face. And he’s wearing the same haunted look Makoto walked into his life with. </p><p>On this face, it’s made a home. Worn lines into it. </p><p>Makoto comes up short when he sees him. </p><p>The man walks forward and bows in front of Salazar, but barely. “I’m grateful to you for taking my son in.”</p><p>“It wasn’t charity.” </p><p>The answer jumps out of him before he can examine it, because he’s angry at this—at something bright and hard-won being counted as no more than the scraps he was willing to throw to a runaway. That isn’t what they have. He doesn’t care if they ever understand what it is, but they should at least know what it isn’t.</p><p>"Even so," the man starts, but evidently Salazar's wording left something to be desired because Abbie jumps in with,</p><p>"They're fucking."</p><p>Lovely. Really great. Two minutes in the room and already this is where it goes, but perhaps he should be glad someone ripped that band aid off. The man's face shifts into something ugly and dark and this, at least, he might have expected. He never hoped for better.</p><p>"Thanks, Abbie," Makoto mutters. She shrugs. To his father, he says something in Japanese, rapid-fire. The man snaps something back, just as fast. Salazar adds this to his list of future ambitions: learning enough to understand what’s going on, at least. By his strained smile, it looks like Laurent at least can pick up what they’re saying. It goes on for only a minute, and Makoto has the last word on whatever it is. Salazar doesn’t care to imagine. Maybe, on second thought, it’s best he doesn’t know what they’re saying.</p><p>Laurent nods awkwardly from across the table and gives Salazar a once-over, up and down, gaze lingering where it shouldn’t. “Yes, I have to say our friend here is quite the catch. Gainfully employed, and not too bad on the eyes—“</p><p>“Stop talking,” Salazar tells him. Laurent raises his hands in surrender, and then, extraordinarily, he listens. Good. </p><p>When Cynthia says, “Why don’t we take a seat?” it isn’t really an offer as much as an order, and one they’re all grateful to follow. </p><p>Salazar has practice at this, too. He orders something that won’t take an hour to eat, but still might press Laurent’s pocket book a bit; he can’t help himself. Makoto seems to have the same thought because Salazar had no idea he had a taste for lobster and knows for a fact he thinks the concept of surf and turf is completely unholy by the way he ranted about it for a good hour the first time he saw a Red Lobster commercial on their television. Everyone has their price, it seems, and his is free. </p><p>He raises an eyebrow at Makoto from behind his menu and Makoto returns the look with a wicked smile and a half-shrug. Might as well have some fun with it.</p><p>It is, in sum, one of the most awkward dinners he’s had to sit through in his life, and he’s had to sit in the back of quite a few. The strained questions about Makoto’s job—which he answers with bright sincerity each time—are put to rest when the elderly woman starts telling stories about jobs, about Makoto, about the things he’s missed, though she never frames it that way. Salazar wants to buy her a drink for the trouble, and at last some of the tension bleeds out of the man sitting beside him. </p><p>Almost, he thinks they’re out of the woods, but as the last plates are cleared away and everyone runs out of stories and innocent questions, Makoto’s father puts his hands together and clears his throat.</p><p>This is what Salazar thinks: he isn’t a bad man. There are bad men, and there are bad men who are fathers, and then there are those who make a few too many mistakes to put a relationship back together the way it started. He knows this because he was almost one of them. How many times did he wonder if his son would end up hating him?</p><p>Salazar braces himself as the man opens his mouth.</p><p>“I’m sorry,” he starts.</p><p>Makoto stiffens. It’s something, but this isn’t quite a sorry level offence. “It’s fine,” Makoto tells him, though it isn’t. </p><p>“What I did...What we did. We handled it poorly.”</p><p>Salazar tries to stop the low snort from coming out, but apparently years of professional silence are nothing at an understatement this extreme. </p><p>To his surprise, the man takes it in turn. He inclines his head. “You’re right.”</p><p>“I don’t expect you to forgive me. None of us expect that.” And now every face at the table is the smallest bit chagrined, the smallest bit regretful. Sorry we made you think your friends were dead again. Sorry we made you think you’d killed your father. He reaches out under the table and takes Makoto’s hand where he’s gripping his own thigh like a vice. </p><p>Makoto is staring somewhere into the middle distance, not as his father, not at Laurent, not at anyone.</p><p>The silence stretches. Cynthia breaks first with a quiet, “Makoto—“ but the man at the end of the table isn’t finished. </p><p>He puts both hands down on it, takes a deep breath, and says “There’s something else.” </p><p>Dread slides down Salazar’s spine. </p><p>“Your mother. I didn’t abandon her. She agreed that it should be kept a secret—“</p><p>Makoto’s hand convulses in his grip, like he’s trying to make a fist, and he thinks this is the only thing keeping him from leaping across the table at his father. What is it they called him? The Wizard? What a joke. Oz sees Makoto’s aborted rage and digs the hole deeper. “It was in your best interest. Any connection to me would have—“</p><p>“What? What would it have done? Explain it.”</p><p>Laurent starts to say something, but Oz shakes his head, and Salazar begins to see how this would have played out. One mistake rolls into another; a bad decision snowballs on the double-down, and you ruin a life. Maybe he thought he was only ruining his own. </p><p>Nothing in life is that simple. Salazar strokes his thumb over the back of Makoto’s hand. </p><p>No answer to his questions is forthcoming. Finally, the old woman says, “It was all of our decision. All of it. He’s not to blame, Edamura.” </p><p>Or: all of them are to blame. Makoto takes a breath, and another. He glances up at Salazar, desperation in the tight lines around his eyes, worry between them. It’s up to him—all of this is. No one can walk this path for him, no matter how desperately Salazar wants in that moment to sweep him up and out the door and pretend they left for Cabo the day Cynthia found them after all. </p><p>“I don’t forgive you,” Makoto says at last. “Not yet. But I don’t hate you.”</p><p>Salazar grips his hand that bit tighter, and Makoto returns it. A collective relief lightens the room. It’s something, at least. The most anyone could expect. Abbie, who is seated closest, looks at him and says, “It was fucked up.” </p><p>Salazar tries to hold his shock in, but still raises an eyebrow at her. She rolls one shoulder. </p><p>For a moment, it seems like that will be the worst of it, but then Oz clears his throat once more and asks, “Do you intend to stay in America?”</p><p>It’s a bell tolling, the distant sound of a siren. The dread that had mostly ebbed surges back in him. He’s paid to expect everything, but somehow, he didn’t expect this. Everyone seems to hold their breath at once. “Yeah,” Makoto says, genuine confusion coloring it. “Why?”</p><p>“This isn’t your home.”</p><p>“What—you think I’m safer in Tokyo after what I did to Suzaku?”</p><p>“Not Tokyo then.”</p><p>“No,” Makoto says starkly, shifting in his seat as he does, so he’s on the tip of his toes, ready to jump up. Salazar wishes he’d put the text in to Tom the second this conversation started and given Makoto an out minutes ago. Oh well. “I’m staying here.”</p><p>“What about your mother? Who will visit her grave with me?”</p><p>Red. Red, all before his eyes, and now he’s the one holding onto Makoto. July is the anniversary of his wife’s death; it never once crossed his mind that Makoto wouldn’t visit her grave with them. This is as easy a choice. “We will,” Salazar says. “We’ll go together.”</p><p>All at once, they seem to remember he can talk. Oz gives him a stripped-down smile, no joy in it at all. “I appreciate what you’ve done for my son, but he has a record. Even if he makes it out of the country, he won’t make it back in. Does he even have a Visa?” To Makoto he says in a softer voice, “Going straight is more difficult than you might think.”</p><p>Salazar takes a deep breath. Under the table, he releases Makoto’s hand. Makoto’s gaze whips around to him in shock. “You’re not buying this—“ he starts, and Salazar can’t say a word. At the silence, Makoto goes red. “He’s full of bullshit!”</p><p>Under the table, Salazar fiddles with his rings. One sits on his little finger, two more on the middle and index, solid gold. Makoto plays with them sometimes, after, laces their fingers and admires them. They all meant something a long time ago, but now he’d be hard pressed to remember where each one is from. They’re a part of him, like the necklace he’s had to stop himself from putting around Makoto’s neck more than half a dozen times because it would be too much, too soon, and too sentimental by half.</p><p>He slides the ring off his little finger and tests the weight of it, and the size. It should be about right.</p><p>Makoto is still staring at him in shock, red-faced, almost bereaved. Salazar slides the ring across the table to him. There. </p><p>What muttering was going on drifts to silence as everyone watches. At the end of the table, Oz seems to deflate. </p><p>Makoto stares at the ring for a long moment, as if he’s never seen one before in his life, and then up at Salazar with the soft look he doesn’t usually show unless he’s just woken up and knows there’s coffee waiting for him. Later, Salazar tells himself. He’ll do it right later. </p><p>That’s all his cards on the table. It’s up to Makoto to play them.</p><p>“Is this—are you serious?” His voice is low and rough with disbelief. As he picks up the ring, his hand shakes a bit, and no. No, that’s not how it works. Mustering every ounce of dead-faced calm he can, Salazar takes his hand and the ring from his grip and slips it over his finger, graceless but gentle.</p><p>It fits, at least. “Yeah. I’m serious.”</p><p>Makoto covers the ring with his other hand, like it will disappear if he isn’t touching it. His expression is so serious, so defiant as he says, "You'll regret it."</p><p>"No, I won't."</p><p>"You can't know that—"</p><p>"Jesus Christ," Salazar mutters and grabs Makoto by the lapel of his suit jacket and kisses him, chaste-like. Nothing that will traumatize anyone. It's really more to shut him up than anything else, and even then, for his own good. </p><p>But of course, he's made a fatal error. Makoto doesn't operate on half-measures and restraint. He's more of an all-or-nothing person, and the other people at the table might as well be wallpaper as he tilts his head and deepens the kiss. </p><p>Salazar has to pull away from it, in the end, less because he wants to and more because even a man who gives no fucks has to give a small one for his own sense of propriety. He puts both hands on Makoto's shoulders and pushes him back a scant inch and he can't look at the table or anyone else because it is embarrassing but not more than that, it makes him stupid with rare joy. He looks at Makoto instead. </p><p>He turns to the table, and says with something close to glee, “I’m staying.”</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>[<a href="https://twitter.com/arahir/status/1343726115458670593">fic on twitter</a>]</p><p>Thank you for reading my magnum opus for this crazy pair! If there are any errors please dm me on twit or such and I'll get to them!! Hope you're having a lovely new year so far.</p>
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